When Theory (soon reportedly to regain his first name as Austin Theory) reunited with Johnny Gargano on WWE Raw, it wasn’t exactly all love. In fact, instead of high fives, it ended up with a superkick.
Nevertheless, the youngest United States Champion and youngest Money in the Bank winner in WWE history looked back on his time in The Way — along with Gargano’s wife Candice LeRae, Indi Hartwell and current tormenter of The Miz, Dexter Lumis — in NXT fondly when he was the guest this week on the Under the Ring podcast with host Phil Strum.
“Everything that you’ve seen, and I feel like as much excitement and just the enjoyability of that, that’s how we were all feeling,” Theory said. “We literally all showed up every time we had something to do and it was just a great time. It was just kind of like a collaboration on everything, all the ideas.
“Just really getting to bring everything together, and we just really did feel like a family.”
Listen to the entire interview above to hear Theory’s thoughts on:
- His two very different WrestleMania experiences (with and without fans in attendance)
- What it was like to work with Pat McAfee and what he thinks about the SmackDown commentator as a performer
- How it feels to carry the Money in the Bank briefcase around with him regularly
- Who was an important mentor for him in the early stages of his WWE career (hint: you might know him by the initials HBK)
Theory is just the latest high profile guest for Strum and Under the Ring, which releases new episodes each Monday in podcast form and posts them to YouTube on Wednesday. Other recent wrestling personalities to drop in for a chat with Phil include AEW star Eddie Kingston, former WWE head writer and current author Brian Gewirtz, and the dean of pro wrestling journalism, Dave Meltzer.
To make sure you don’t miss an episode, subscribe to Under the Ring on Apple Podcasts or your podcast provider of choice, or check out the Under the Ring YouTube channel to see all of the interviews in video form.